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Monday, October 22, 2012

Archaeology from the Interzone: Applications of the Burroughs-Gysin cut up method to problems in the Neolithic of Britain and Ireland

Regular readers of this blog will be familiar with my background as a field archaeologist. Many will also know of my attitude to archaeological theory: not so much 'ambivalent' as 'uncomfortable'. I started my university education a long time ago, when (at least in the west of Ireland) archaeological theory was not regularly considered and discussed, much less taught. In this, I am very much a product of my time and place. At one time (for a dare), I read Johnson's Archaeological Theory: An Introduction, but unfortunately found it quite impenetrable. I have, belatedly, attempted to get my head around the famous Transit Van excavation, by recreating my own version of it. The experience was equally intellectually exhilarating and challenging, as the process allowed me to break down some of my 'anti-theory' biases. This was coupled with a large number of thought-provoking comments on the blog, and in other social-media, which helped to confront my own ingrained thought processes. I would hardly say that I have come out the other side of this cerebral 'journey' as a whole-hearted convert to archaeological theory, but there is now an accommodation for all within my approach.

Just when I though I was 'becoming comfortable' with archaeological theory, I was asked by Stuart Rathbone to read an early draft of the paper you see below. Stuart is a field archaeologist of many years standing. He is co-author (with Victoria Ginn) of the rather wonderful book: Corrstown: A Coastal Community. Excavations of a Bronze Age village in Northern Ireland (reviewed here). He is also the central figure behind the Campaign For Sensible Archaeology, a clarion call for no-nonsense reporting and discussion in archaeology. In this paper, Stuart has stepped into a very different archaeological world: he advocates the use of the Burroughs-Gysin cut up technique as a method of gaining new and different insights into the archaeology of Neolithic Britain and Ireland. I will not pretend that this is an easy read - but it is rewarding. My initial fear was that it was a daft idea - definitely not 'sensible' - but his results are extraordinary. Whatever any reader thinks of the method, I feel that the results - these unlikely mergings and mashings of colliding sentences - brings forth something extraordinary: genuinely new insights into archaeology. For this reason, I am proud to introduce Stuart as the latest guest-blogger and honoured that he has chosen to share this wonderful, not-sensible, paper here.

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“Scientists, I hope, will become more creative and
writers more scientific” The Third Mind

William Seaward
Burroughs was one of the great outsider icons of 20th century
America, and his most famous novel, The Naked Lunch, is widely acknowledged as
a classic of mid 20th century experimental literature (Burroughs,
1959). His fiction is bizarre and difficult to read, graphic in the extreme and
was subject to obscenity prosecutions (Lotringer 2001, 51-2, 331-343). He also
wrote highly explicit works of auto biography which describe a life almost as
strange as his fiction. An unrepentant heroin user, unapologetic homosexual,
accidental wife killer, devotee of weird science, intercontinental bohemian,
gun nut and shotgun artist, his accounts of his life are always engaging and offer an easier read than much of his fiction
(Burroughs, 1953; 1985; 2001). In interview he was lucid and candid, often
extremely critical of contemporary politicians and demonstrated a formidable
range of interests (Lotringer 2001). Widely regarded as one of the key figures
of the ‘Beat Generation’ he was older than the other beat writers and in many
ways ploughed his own furrow. Indeed Burroughs himself constantly denied ever
being part of the ‘Beat Generation’ claiming repeatedly and somewhat
disingenuously that it was an American movement and that he was in Europe at the time (Miles 2000, 6).

The existence of
a ‘Beat Generation’ has been questioned by other participants in the movement
who highlight the small number of people involved. Gary Snyder claimed that “it
consisted of only three or four people, and four people don’t make up a generation”
(Charters 2001, XV). This view is rather restrictive but whilst those numbers
could probably be increased tenfold, the number of direct participants remains
extremely low. Covering the same theme Hettie Jones joked that “at one point
every one identified with it could fit into my living room, and I didn’t think
a whole generation could fit into my living room” (Charters 2001, 618).
Whatever the reality of the ‘Beat Generation’ it is clear that a series of
writers, most prominently William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Herbert
Hunkle and Gregory Corso, were part of
an extended social network and produced work exploring similar themes at
roughly the same time. These shared themes include drug use, sexual
relationships, mental illness, the nature of art, the nature of spirituality
and the relationship of the individual to the divine. Burroughs’ work stands
somewhat apart in its focus on prose over poetry, the graphic and lurid
descriptions of sex and drug taking, and the use of the infamous ‘cut up’
technique.

Throughout
Burroughs’ work there are repeating themes, some of which relate to topics that
may be of interest to the archaeologist. At an early point Burroughs had taken
a formal interest in the subject; after completing a degree in English
Literature at Harvard in 1936 he undertook some post graduate studies in
anthropology and archaeology (Lotringer 2001, 48). Historical and pseudo
historical figures feature as characters in his fiction and are discussed,
manipulated and misrepresented in his nonfiction. Without doubt the two most
important historical characters in Burroughs’ work are Hassan i Sabbah, the
leader of the Arabian Hashshashin sect in 11th century Iran, and
Captain Mission, the alleged leader of a pirate utopia in Madagascar during the
17th century, but who is widely regarded as a literary invention of
Daniel Defoe (Burroughs 1981). Locations are often drawn from historical
sources or drawn from his travels around the Americas,
Europe and Africa. Occasionally his work verges
into ethnographical territories, although with a clear focus on acquiring and taking
drugs and the workings of the local homosexual scene (Burroughs & Ginsberg
1963). Time in Burroughs’ work is fluid and often non-linear; journeys can be
made forwards and backwards in time either through design or accident.
Different methods are used by his characters for temporal relocation, but they
never utilise the large machinery of science fiction. Typically time travel
occurs at death, during sexual climax, during drug induced trances, through the
use of the ‘cut up’ technique, or through a combination of any of the above.

The Burroughs-Gysin
cut up technique was first conceived by Burroughs’ friend and collaborator Brion
Gysin whilst the pair were living in the ‘Beat Hotel’ in Paris in 1957 (Lotringer
2001, 66-7; Wilson & Gysin 2000, 63). Gysin having accidently cut up some
newspapers with a scalpel recombined the cut up texts to make new ones. After
showing the method to Burroughs they experimented with it for some time before
co authoring two of the first cut up publications, ‘The Third Mind’ (the title
referring to the third presence that had been unconsciously released by the two
collaborators during the cut ups) and ‘The Exterminator’ (Burroughs & Gysin
1960; Sobieszek 1996, 55-73). Gysin also contributed to ‘Minutes to Go’, a
collaborative effort that included pieces by Gregory Corso and Beiles Sinclair
(Burroughs et al 1960). Subsequently
Gysin abandoned the technique claiming that the results were “absolutely
unreadable, nobody could read them, you just – William himself said he couldn’t
read them a second time...uh, they produced a certain kind of very unhappy
psychic effect...” (Willson & Gysin 2000, 62). Burroughs continued to
experiment with the technique, and the related ‘fold in’ method, for a
considerable period of time publishing several books of largely cut up text
that had been re-edited into some semblance of order, ‘The Soft Machine’, ‘The
Ticket that Exploded’ and ‘Nova Express’ (Burroughs 1961; 1962; 1964). Subsequently
he continued using the ideas generated through cutting up texts to inspire
slightly more conventional works, in particular in the ‘Wild Boys’ and ‘WesternLands’ trilogies (Burroughs 1971; 1973;
1980; 1981; 1984; 1987). The cut up technique has clear similarities to the
automatic writing techniques used by surrealists and spiritualists during the
earlier part of the 20th century. Gysin argues, perhaps
unconvincingly, there was little or no direct influence, but this link has been
explored at length by Robson (Robinson 2011, 5-17; Willson & Gysin 2000,
65). Further experiments moved beyond simply cutting and rearranging texts to
involve the manipulation of images, sound recordings and film footage. Again
these experiments led to rather indigestible results, but the sort of cutting
and rearranging of sounds used on recordings like ‘Break Through in Grey Room’
have some similarity with early experimental hip hop artists such as ‘The
Beatnigs’, and Miles has claimed these audio cut ups are a direct precursor of
early industrial music (Miles 2000, 7; Sub Rosa 1986). Many recordings are now
available, perhaps the most successful being ‘Spare Ass Annie and other stories’,
a collaboration between Burroughs and former ‘Beatnig’ Michael Franti (Island 1993).

Burroughs frequently
refers to the use of the cut up technique within his fiction, and it is one
method through which his characters can affect temporal translocation. The
clearest example of this is found in the routine, ‘The Mayan Caper’, first
published as part of ‘The Soft Machine’ collection. In this work the
protagonist first uses cut up techniques to travel back to the height of the
Mayan civilisation and, once he arrives, uses cut up techniques to reverse the
mind control machines that the priestly cast are using to subjugate the
population and instigates a revolution (Burroughs 1961). This routine clearly
reflects Burroughs firmly held belief that the cut up techniques were
inherently powerful and could be used to influence genuine change in the real
world (Lotringer 2001, 155; Robinson 2007, 6-8).

Applying the Burroughs-Gysin cut up technique to
problems in British prehistory

The worlds of literature
and archaeology have occasionally collided. Typically this has been where
accounts of monuments or excavations are included within works of fiction and
have subsequently been mined for information relevant to archaeologists as any
other historical source might be assessed. Following a more traditional
literary analysis method a recent study has looked at the influence of
archaeology in the works of Thomas Hardy (Davies 2011). A series of papers
published by Bournemouth University following a TAG session examine the role of
archaeology and its practitioners in Science Fiction books and TV shows, and
even explores imaginary archaeologies that exist in fictional settings such as
Terry Pratchett’s ‘Discworld’ (Russell 2002; Brooks 2002; Brown 2002; Boyd
2002). A more recent paper has examined the various references to archaeology
in the TV show ‘Futurama’, and the way in which archaeology is repeatedly used
as a source of complex metaphors by the script writers (Hall 2011). Whilst this
may establish some form of precedent for the following study, it has to be
acknowledged that the nature of Burroughs’ methods means the idea that anything
useful generated by its application would obviously need to be treated with
great caution. In defence of this I can only offer the old platitude that
fortune is supposed to favour the brave...

A long standing
problem for archaeologists attempting to understand the Neolithic period is the
separation of religious and more practical aspects of life that is locked into
the modern mindset. It has been convincingly argued that this sort of
separation may not have been part of the Neolithic world view and that all
aspects of life may have been infused with symbolic and religious meaning (Topping
1996, 163-70). Despite this acknowledgement the problem of describing a more
cohesive world view seems to constantly challenge archaeological writers. For
example critical studies of houses from the Neolithic have often sought to
emphasise ritual aspects of the building and have subsequently interpreted
building foot prints in various non domestic ways, such as cult houses, feasting
halls, seasonal meeting places, mortuary houses and comparisons have even been
drawn with the cursus monuments (Barclay 1996, 73-5; Cross 2003; Loveday 2006;
Pryor 2003, 139-46). Unfortunately it seems that whilst superficially
acknowledging the way which domestic activities may not be separated from
religious and symbolic ones, these explanations tend to move interpretations
fully into the religious realm and properly unified explanations have remained
elusive.

The Burroughs-Gysin
cut up method represents an admittedly avant-garde method through which such a
unified understanding could potentially be achieved. By taking various texts
dealing with different aspects of the Neolithic period and subjecting them to
cut up style manipulation it may be possible to generate ideas and explanations
that are not directed by our modern preconceptions. Ideas generated by ‘the
third mind’ are not created through rational argument but through random
associations in an automated and undirected way. Whilst the resulting cut ups
would inevitably be unpalatable to the reader, it is suggested that useful
concepts might be generated that could be used as the starting points for new
discussions that would not be so directly derived from modern viewpoints.

Burroughs’
himself was clearly fascinated by the actual process of physically cutting up
pages of text, and imported great symbolism and mysticism to this destructive
process. However Burroughs’ was ever drawn to pseudo science and occultism. He
spent considerable lengths of time inside one of Wilhelm Reich’s Orgon
Accumulators and seemed convinced, for a while at least, that he had met an
Artificial Intelligence in London
during the early 1960’s known as CONTROL (Kerouac 1957, 89; Lotringer 2001, 78,
114-5). This aspect of his work need not occupy our attention nor dissuade us
from adapting the cut up technique to suit our purposes. The following
experiment only focuses on the method of rearranging sentences and words to
generate new ideas that would not be easily reached through logical thought.

The method used
here was simply to copy sections of text into a Microsoft Word file and mix
them up using the copy and paste functions. The font colour of text belonging
to different sources was changed so that during the mixing process the origin
of any text could be identified and the degree of rearrangement that had been
achieved could be tracked (Figure 1). The included texts were sourced simply
from whatever material relating to the Neolithic had been accumulated on a
portable hard drive that was conveniently to hand. Passages were selected from
pieces discussing a wide variety of topics including houses, enclosures,
settlement patterns, warfare, burial, territory, drug use, art and so on
(Sources listed in Appendix) that seemed to cover a wide range of aspects of
Neolithic life. Passages included several pieces I had written or contributed
to, several pieces I was very familiar with and had read on different
occasions, and several pieces that I was still trying to find the time to read
for the first time. The selections were exclusively made from discursive
sections, and were skimmed over to check for relevance but not read in depth.
The cut up process thus began during this initial phase and segments were
somewhat rudely snatched out of larger passages, rather than being included in
their entirety. Academic debris (References, figure numbers etc) were removed
from the text prior to the commencement of the cuts, as were all of the
original paragraph breaks.

Once the
selected texts had been assembled and assigned colours they were subject to six
separate ‘cuts’ or passes, each one being saved as a separate file. Figure 1
illustrates the degree of rearrangement achieved at the end of the 2nd,
4th and 6th cuts respectively. A seventh cut was
attempted but by that point all sentence structure had totally broken down and
the result was mostly a long string of unconnected words and phrase fragments,
and this final cut was discarded. Reading through the different cuts
interesting phrases were identified and saved individually. The most useful of
these are presented below, with minor alterations to make them scan more easily
to the reader; where it has been necessary to add in additional words to enable
the text to be read the addition is shown in italics. The original source of
each section of the cut up is indicated by a numerical superscript tied into
the list in the appendix. Each selection is followed by a brief examination of
the interesting points that occurred to the author as the text was encountered.
No attempt has been made to create a larger narrative from these cut ups, they
are simply offered as interesting places to begin further discussions.

Figure 1. Changing the font colour of text from different sources provided a
simple method to monitor the level of destruction wrought upon the original sent ence
structure.

Results

The FirstPass

1)It has been suggested that the
house at Ballyglass, Co. Mayo, was deliberately demolished in order to
construct the overlying court tomb. Cooney lists an array of possible reasons
why such houses¹ use substances and techniques to alter perception and
consciousness; a neglected aspect of past cultures².

This cut up highlights
how the use of narcotic substances and decorative techniques may have meant
that being inside a Neolithic long house could have been a far more vibrant
experience than is reflected by the foundation slots and post holes that are
encountered during archaeological excavation. Such ideas are familiar from the
archaeological literature however, and often revolving around ethnographic
parallels (eg Richards 1996; Hugh Jones 1996). If such an enhanced experience
was taking place within the building it might have a relevance to why the court
tomb was subsequently constructed over its remains. Again the presence of house
found underneath tombs has been the subject of a great deal of discussion, and
this cut up brings no new insights, it has been included here as it marked an
early indication that the cutting process might actually create useable results
(Grogan 1996, 57; Jones 2007, 136-7).

The SecondPass

2)clearfires³
⁴ before the cairn or chambers were built⁴.

The term
‘clearfires’ is a very interesting one, as it suggests a particular type of
fire that we do not presently have a specific word for. As an example of what
we could term a ‘clearfire’ might be the burning of mortuary houses prior to
the construction of long barrows, as had apparently happened at Raisthorpe,
Street House Farm and Kemp Howe all in
Yorkshire, Lochill, Dumfies and Galloway and Dalladies, Grampian for example (Russell
2002, 59-60; Piggott 1972, 34-5; Vyner 1984, 185-191). The term ‘clearfire’ also
suggests we should be looking for other specific types of fire, and
investigating the way in which fire was used, and controlled for different
purposes. For instance, a ‘dayfire’ could be seen as a quick and well
controlled burn, quite different to the ‘clearfire’ which might be large and
rage uncontrolled, or a ‘slowfire’ which may have been a long duration burn. This
cut up highlights that there may be many different types of fire and that
during excavation we should attempt to identify them more precisely. Magnetic
readings of burnt soils can inform us about the temperatures achieved and
duration of burns, but these are not presently undertaken routinely (James
Bonsall pers comms). Combined with full species identification of charred
remains it might be possible to identify more accurately the different types of
burning we encounter.

3)Its outer
wall was⁵ for communication
between disparate groups. As discussed, the tor enclosure evidence fits well
into the lives of a society that continued a fairly mobile existence; indeed,
the enclosure of specific tors at certain places in the landscape would seem to
argue more strongly for a reference to⁶ occupants of
the area¹.

This cut up seems to reinforce the idea that walls and boundaries
were more than simple, functional, divisions of space and may have had
particular meanings that were being communicated to particular groups and
possibly to denote limits of access for cultural rather than functional or
economic reasons.

The ThirdPass

4)The decline of the Neolithic
settlement at this site may have been due to a number of factors¹; art was
apparently derived from endogenous visions associated with some form of
mind-altering practice²

This cut up suggests a link between art and settlement patterns that
would not normally be found in our discussions. Could changes in art really
influence settlement patterns? Changes in art styles, such as the development
of Groovedware, are observed to occur concurrently with larger shifts in
culture, but could the changes in art, especially if connected to narcotic
practices, be seen as a cause rather than an effect of cultural change?

5)conflict ensued with the formation of a quasi-political
unity⁶, “The serpentine beads¹”. This
may have involved the use of hallucinogenic substances²

This cut up suggests the presence of a social group named after a
specific artefact type, certainly a possibility, but ethnonyms are a difficult
subject that probably can’t be explored with much purpose during this period.
More interestingly it links the use of hallucinogenic substances to the
formation of political groups and to the development of conflict, possibly even
warfare. A convincing argument has been made that the style of megalithic art
found in Ireland and western Britain can be attributed to the use of strong
hallucinogens, however we might usefully examine how the use of such substances
effect other aspects of the societies we study (Dronfield 1995; Lewis-Williams
& Pearce 2005, 39-59).

6)data from² Quartz
seems to have been important to the Neolithic people⁴

This
simple cut up highlights the importance that some Neolithic people placed on
quartz, which is often found in different guises at burial sites and other
locations. For example huge numbers of rounded quartz pebbles were brought to
the Neolithic enclosures at Billown on the Isle of Man,
whilst quartz crystal rods have been recovered from several court tombs, such
as Annaghmare
Court Cairn, Co

Armagh and Creevykeel Court Cairn, Co Sligo, and quartz
pavements were constructed around the exterior of the BoyneValley
passage tombs (Waterman, D.M. 1965, 35; Jones
2007, 108;Darvil 2003, 119; Stout 2002). The
reasons for this have never been firmly established but this cut up presents
the interesting idea that quartz was specifically a substance from which
information could be acquired, perhaps as a means of communicating with an ancestral
or other form of supernatural realm.

The FourthPass

7)This may have involved the use of hallucinogenic
substances or² early Neolithic agriculture⁷

Again this cut up emphasises the role of hallucinogens in Neolithic
society. Here the cut up presents hallucinogens as an explanation that is equal
in weight to Early Neolithic agriculture. This triggers the amusing, but not
perhaps useful notion, that the motivation behind the Neolithic colonisation of
Britain and Ireland may
have been the search for hallucinogens rather than the expansion of
agriculture. More seriously this cut up, by juxtaposing two normally
unconnected topics, reminds us of the long delay that occurred between the
arrival of the Neolithic package on the shores of northern Europe and its
eventual introduction into Britain
and Ireland.
The halt of the expansion suggests more complex motivations than simple expansionist
drive fuelled by economic considerations.

8)the house¹ chamber³

This simple cut up immediately brings to mind the shared
architectural features seen between the houses at Barnhouse and the Maes Howe
passage tomb on Orkney. The term ‘house chamber’ and the obvious juxtaposition,
‘chamber house’ could be useful terms to discuss the relationship between
domestic and megalithic architectural traditions. However it should be
emphasised that this relationship has been identified long ago by more
traditional and logical methods and has already been discussed at length by
Richards, amongst others (Richards 1993; Garrow et al 2005).

The FifthPass

9)amongst the fragmentary remains of⁸ reoccurring
assemblage³

This final cut up has a seemingly innocuous meaning, but was
selected originally for its rather pleasingly ‘beat’ rhythm. However on
reflection it may be pointing to a useful idea concerning the way in which we
interpret artefacts assemblages, specifically regarding the point at which
fragmentation occurred. Whilst we often think of finds assemblages as being
incomplete due to all manner of post deposition processes, in many instances
these assemblages may never have been complete. The author has recently
discussed the meaning of small fragmentary assemblages found in isolated prehistoric
pits, but fragmentation in other contexts, such as areas outside of tombs for
example, or in areas around settlements, could be usefully explored (Rathbone
2012). Contemporary activities may have been taken place amongst, and actively
involving, fragmentary assemblages. The sorts of complex spreads of different
materials found in the court and chambers of tombs such as Rathlackan, Co Mayo,
may be interpreted as assemblages that have become disturbed over time (Byrne et al 2009). However another reading of
the same evidence would be that the instead we should think of these areas as
more akin to middens, with ceremonies taking place amongst the debris left
behind by previous events, and ever more material accumulating over time. In
this scenario assemblages would not be seen as disturbed and incomplete, they would
be interpreted as never having been complete or well ordered in the first
place.

Conclusions

The above
discussions are offered as points which could be expanded on in more depth
elsewhere. Rather than being presented as evidence of the cut up technique
producing new insights, they are simply offered as what Burroughs might refer
to as ‘Ports of Entry’, starting places for new discussions. Certainly the cut
ups present several examples where the normal order of cause and affect appear
interestingly reversed, and there are several examples of places where intriguing
links are made between processes which would normally not be strongly
associated with each other. However how much any of this really results from
the actions of ‘the third mind’ rather than simply reflecting some of my own
long term concerns, in particular the general absence of sensible discussion
about the role of drug taking in Neolithic Society, the lack of a holistic
understanding of Neolithic society and the overemphasis on ritual behaviour, is
not entirely clear. In effect random occurrences in the cut ups may have
reminded me of ideas I already held, although I do not think that such a process
would account for all of the points of interest that were identified. As
Burroughs himself put it, “What appears to be random my not, in fact, be random
at all. You have selected what you want to cut up. After that, you select what
you want to use” (Lotringer 2001, 262).

Two concepts were
generated by the cut ups that I feel could be genuinely interesting to explore
in greater detail. The first is the idea of examining different types of
burning events during the Neolithic, although the technical aspects of such a
study are beyond my own rather limited range of skills. The second is the
notion of events taking place amongst unsorted and already fragmented spreads
of artefacts, and this is something that I may explore in the future,
specifically in regard to the activities taking place in and around Irish Court
Tombs, but perhaps also looking at examples of ‘structured depositions’ found
in house foundations and enclosure ditches. The results of the excavations that
took place at the intertidal site, The Stumble, in Kent may be particularly
important in this regard as that excavation suggests that the sheer quantity of
broken and unsorted material that would be present around areas of Neolithic
activity may have been grossly underestimated (Brown 1997).

This attempt to
use the Burroughs-Gysin method has therefore been an amusing, and not entirely
unsuccessful experiment. It would seem extremely unlikely that such a technique
would find much favour in the archaeological community, and it is far from
certain that any discussions subsequently presented that had their ultimate
origin in a cut up text would be well received. This is not necessarily a bad
thing. The current post-modernist paradigm in British archaeology is not one I
am particularly at ease with, and it is only from that sort of theoretical
‘anything goes stance’ that this sort of technique could be reasonably
justified (Rathbone 2010). Personally I typically favour a far more traditional
and evidence based approach to archaeology, and this sort of exercise lies well
outside of my academic comfort zone. The words of the art critic Terence Kealey
ring a resounding note of caution, “We live with the post-modern insights by
ignoring them in practice whilst acknowledging them in theory” (Quoted in
Flemming 2006). Ultimately perhaps a more fitting place for such a discussion
would be in a literary study relating to the work and influence of Burroughs
rather than in an archaeological publication. Having said that time will tell
if this experiment does lead to further publications and that may be a better
measure of the success, or otherwise, of this experiment.

Brooks, A. 2002 “Under old earth”: material culture, identity and history in the work of Cordwainer Smith. In M. Russell (ed) Digging holes in popular culture: Archaeology and Science Fiction, 77-84. Oxford: Oxbow Books.